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WTF Merlin?

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
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It could be some strange regulations relating to the fire effects. They might need a 'senior' person who's approved to reset the system. Possibly exacerbated by management trying to be extra careful following the Smiler accident - a result of a hasty reset.
 

Smithy

Strata Poster
Was it not an addition post-Smiler that resets had to be authorised by management, rather than just an engineer? This probably has filtered down to cover water effects as well to cover something like the rapids, for example
 

SaiyanHajime

CF Legend
"we do believe that those assets (Busch Gardens) are interesting and we could certainly do a lot with them, particularly around accommodation.”

*Gulp*
But wait though - why doesn't Busch Williamsburg have a hotel? I've been saying this for years. Imagine a Merlin-esque themed hotel there, with different wings being themed to the different countries. It would be legitimately awesome. And everything that sucks about Merlin accommodation wouldn't be an issue in the USA, because the yanks wouldn't stand for it. (No aircon, crap service, etc.) Heide's hotel for example is legitimately good - the theming standard, the food (because the crappy breakfast in Alton's hotel is a *British problem* with accepting mediocrity), the service. All spot on. The only suck was no aircon, which is a European problem not a Merlin problem, and arguably no pool facilities... Imo you can't call yourself a resort without a pool. That's like, one of the basic facilities you need. XD

BGW should have a hotel to compete with that local Great Woof Lodge.
 

Peet

Giga Poster
I hate to feed the anti-Merlin flames but this seems to be the best place to post this. The Swarm station has had a lot of the wood effect cladding stripped from the station roof frame and now looks like this:
20180413_160024.jpg

As a reminder here it is in its former glory:
20170409_190800.jpg

I hope they get it fixed at some point!
 

SaiyanHajime

CF Legend
It was pealing off on opening day. I have a photo somewhere.

It seems a bit weird to me that it was ever wooden cladding on a metal structure in the first place. Why not just use actual beams? I guess there must be a reason.
 

Bert2theSpark

Mega Poster
More of a WTF Cedar Point but it's related to Merlin neither the less.

31067476_1618903964893921_8836437556984807424_n.png

Even the clouds are in similar locations...
 

Benenen

Hyper Poster
Had a lovely day at Alton Towers yesterday, nice and quiet so no queues other than Galactica which was running with bizarre operations. The queue was back to the entrance so we decided to wait it out for a bit, during which time we saw two trains go round about three minutes apart with 11 riders on each. For some reason the front four rows on both trains were empty and given the poor dispatch times they can't have been getting any more than about 210 riders an hour on one or their headline rides. As the park was only open for six hours there was no way I was going to queue 50+ minutes for Galactica when I could walk on everything else.
d761c3ae1ab6d8a5e84913b9573be2d5.jpg
 

davidm

Strata Poster
They run the VR only on the rear 2 or 3 rows and the Q-split for VR/non-VR is only apparent once you get almost to the station entrance ; so if a lot of people only want to ride it with VR then thats the Q all backed up ; unless they are doing some sensible Q-line management (hah!), anyone further back in the Q who doesn't want to do VR is stuck in the Q for VR.

Brilliant huh?
 

Ben

CF Legend
The Galacitca operations are an absolute joke, it took us about 25 minutes from entering the station.
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
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See, I still need The Smiler, plus now there's Octonauts and Wickerman, so it's a +3 for me at Alton, but I just really don't know if I can be bothered to make the effort and put myself through all the bulls**t.
 
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